Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[158] and military qualities, but all leaders are recognized for what they have given. The result is a tribute to that natural inequality of men which is as fully recognized, in a true republic, as their natural equality; that is, they are equal in the sense of being equally men, but not equal in their gifts as men. It is curious to see how the social falsities of English society tell on educated Englishmen, so surely as they grow old enough to shed the generous impulses of youth. It was in vain that Tennyson wrote ‘Clara Vere de Vere,’ and Froude ‘The Nemesis of Faith,’ and Ruskin ‘Modern Painters,’ and Swinburne the ‘Song in Time of Order:’ let them once reach middle life and they are all stanch Tories and ‘accept dukes;’ and now Huxley follows in their train. But here in America we find no difficulty in selecting our natural leaders, sooner or later, and owning them; they do not have to fight for recognition, in most cases; it comes by a process like the law of gravitation.

In our colonial town records the object of the meeting was often stated as being ‘to know the Town's Mind’ on certain questions; the Town's